Wii U Sales Increase 340%, Passes Four Million SKU Install Base

“Oh, the Wii U is failing... it's failing I tell you! It's Jimmies are rustled out! You can't revive Nintendo! Nintendo is doomed! The Wii U is dead! The world is over, the world is over!” that's what it sounds like in most core circles whenever Nintendo and the Wii U are brought into the discussion. Doomsday talk that would make most apocalyptic Mayan fanboys scoff in dismay.

The reality is that Nintendo isn't doing half as bad as the naysayers say and at least three times better than the opposite of what the non-believers have been promulgating.

Essentially that means the Wii U, in November, had a sales spike of 415% over its August sales. A rough guess would be that the console has done over 400,000 over the past three months, globally. Now if only someone can figure out what the Wii U definitively sold in August, we might have a strong indication of how far along the system has moved, sales wise.

We actually get a brief estimate of the actual sales sum from the end of the summer up until the holiday surge in November by checking VGChartz, where they estimate that the console has now sold 4.32 million units, where-as it was roughly just above the 3.5 mark throughout the majority of the summer. In their analytical report, VGChartz shows that the Wii U moved 31,712 units in the second week of August and 29,616 units in the third week of August. That would mean – based on empirical data – the console approximately moved somewhere around 116,000 for the total of August. As noted on Nintendo Everything, Nintendo didn't roll out specific sales SKU data for the Wii U, but at least we have an idea of how much the Wii U sold in August.

Back in October it was mentioned that the six months leading up to October's data saw the Wii U selling 460,000 units, but this number also seems to apply to the four months of sales data including August, September, October and November as well, putting the total at over 800,000 SKUs within the 10 month period.

Seeing an increase by more than four-fifths of a million SKUs within that time span is a great thing for Nintendo, and shows that the Wii U is far from being dead in the water.

Ultimately, this means that the Wii U is continuing to stave off the encroaching presence of the PlayStation 4 trying to catch up to its install base. For now, though, the Wii U is the market leader and it looks like as it builds momentum through the holidays toward a very strong 2014 line-up of games, the Wii U will continue to maintain its lead.

Forbes' Erik Kain also notes that even if the Wii U continues to perform on par or under the expectations of some, Nintendo is still in a good enough position to weather the storm and break through the drought of doomsday talk and industry negativity.

The only thing Nintendo needs to look out for is Sony's attempt to offer just as strong a line-up of indie to AAA software for the PS4, as it could prove to be a serious threat to Nintendo regaining their sales momentum and getting a good enough foothold to leave the competition in the dust.